Current and former members of the Club traveled from far and wide to Canberra to celebrate the Club's 50th Anniversary. A celebratory dinner was held in conjunction with the ANU Annual, with special guests including David Luchetti, President of ANU Sport, and Cerri Murphy, President of the ACT Fencing Association. The recipient of the Mucronibus Crediti sword was also announced at the dinner. This Club would like to congratulate Kelvin Peh on recieving this years award.

The party carried on late into the night, making for some interesting bouts on the 2nd day of the Annual!

The Club would like to thank all those who travelled interstate and provided messages of support from around the world. See you at the 60th Anniversary!

The first Canberra Fencing League season concluded last week with the victory of the Maison Honey Badgers.

Of the nine teams entered, no team won or lost all of its matches resulting in a very close battle for places by all teams.

Many fencers from ANU and other Canberra based clubs enjoyed the friendly competition atmosphere. The beginners also particularly enjoyed the easy method of integration into the club following the semester one beginner course

Fencers looking forward for another season and those who missed out on the last one don't have long to wait, foil and sabre seasons will follow later in 2018.

If you have any feedback on the last season, please let Kelvin Peh know.

Several ANU fencers recently participated in a one day training event with Australian Olympian, Commonwealth Gold medalist, and former Australian National Men's Foil and Sabre champion Frank Bartolillo.

Frank shared his expertise on preparation for competitions, his philosophy around setting goals, and stressed the importance of acting with good sportsmanship in everything that you do.

The fencers took part in a series of drills to exercise their fitness, agility, footwork, and bladework. He also oversaw a series of structured fencing bouts and gave feedback to the fencers.

ANU fencers came away energised for nationals. The ANU Fencing club also got a lot of good ideas for new drills and exercises to incorporate into training.

Thanks again to Frank for coming down from Sydney. Thanks also to ACTFA and to Maison Escrime for hosting and organising the event.

The ANU Fencing Club had a great time over the Canberra Day weekend down at the Tuggeranong Multi-sport Centre for ACTFA's State Open and Novice Championships. ANU Fencers competed in all weapons. There were also a number of ANU fencers who helped to referee, and to help run the canteen.

Notable results from ANU Fencers

Open Men's Foil

D'arcy Jessop — Bronze

Matt Bondfield — Top 8

Open Womens Epee

Kate Curtis — Silver

Open Mens Epee

Jeremy Shelley — Gold

Kelven Peh — Bronze

Michael Spencer — Top 8

David Peilshmidt — Top 8

Dale Drummond — Top 8

Novice Mixed Epee

Phutaneth Lohsakul — Gold

Open Womens Sabre

Alice Warrington — Bronze

Amanda Ford — Bronze

Open Mens Sabre

Grant McKay — Silver

Jeremy Sadler — Bronze

Adam Bartley — Top 8

Thanks to Chris Sadler for taking photos, to Carl Makin for running the DT and to the ACTFA committee for organising the competition weekend.

The ANU Annual took place over the weekend of the 13th and 14th of August 2016. We had competitions in both Open and Novice categories in all three weapons. We also had a bake sale to raise funds for Unigames (my chocolate-chip cookies were delicious, just FYI).

In lieu of medals, the prizewinners were awarded more ANU-branded rubber ducks. If you'd like to know how it ended up, the final rankings are all up on the results page.

Last Sunday, the 31st of July, the first-ever ANU-ADFA intervarsity competition was held at ANU. The goal of the competition was to encourage competition and camaraderie between the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Australian National University fencing clubs, and with that in mind it was a huge success. We had 20 fencers in the novice competition, more than half of whom were from ADFA.

We held both novice and open individual foil competitions, and a teams competition of ANU v. ADFA. The team competition was closely fought, with a final score of 45-38 giving ANU the victory. The team were awarded the now-customary ANU blue rubber duckie.

Thanks to the ADFA fencers for bringing some well-received competitive spirit to ANU — we're looking forward to seeing you all again soon. Special thanks also goes to all our volunteers who helped set up the pistes, referee, run the bbq, and take photos. We really couldn't have done it without you.

State

Cath Syme won a Bronze in the NSWFA Southern Highlands GP Open Womens Epee (it says "Southern Highlands" on her club affiliation but we know where her loyalties lie)

National

Nigel Nutt won Gold at DH McKenzie (AFC1) in the Veteran Men's Foil!

Jeremy Shelley won Silver at DH McKenzie (AFC1) in the Open Men's Epee!

International!

Representing Australia, D'arcy Jessop and Alice Warrington both received medals for their performance at the 2016 SEA Pacific Championships. D'Arcy won a Silver medal as part of the Australian Cadet Mens Foil B Team, and Alice won Bronze with both the Australian Cadet and Junior Womens Sabre teams.

The ANU Sport Blues awards are the highest accolade that a student athlete can receive at the ANU.

The ACT's favourite Epeeist, Jeremy Shelley, received a Blue Award for his achievements and hard work. Sarah Jones got a Half Blue, which is like a Blue Award except... smaller? A paler shade of Blue? Anyway.

With eight novices and eight veterans, these were both mixed competitions. Results are available from the results page (that's where they live!)

Thanks to everyone who came along, especially to the novices straight from the semester 1 beginners course who hadn't fenced Epee before and decided to give it a go.

Thanks also to Issy, whose receipt from Bunnings for "a bag of dirt and a test pot of paint" confused Ash greatly. The prizes (wee succulent pot plants) were well received by the winners. Hopefully, if they care for them well enough, we can re-use them next year!

The first club competition of the year was held the other week, and the flavour was Sabre. The winners were Amanda Ford and Jeremy Sadler, who received official ANUFC Blue Rubber Ducky trophies for their trouble.

We had a great response to the beginners course for Semester 1, with a full Tuesday and a pretty busy overflow group on Sunday as well. They seem like they're getting the hang of it already, and the club is happy to have them.

If you're new to fencing and you missed out but you're still interested in joining the club, join our Facebook group or send us an email and get in touch.

We've had a great response to the beginners' course for block one—in fact, we've had so many people apply that we're now oversubscribed.

Not to worry, though. We're going to run an extra five-week course on Sundays, starting on the 28th February. The course starts at 11.30 each week—plenty of time to drag yourself out of bed and get down to ANU Sport.

The first "Come & Try" night of the year was a big success! We had a big group of people come along to see what fencing at ANU is all about. If you came along and you're interested in signing up for the first beginners course, have a look at this page right here.

Everybody getting stuck in and having a go

And if you missed out on coming but you're still interested in checking out the club, come and see us after 7 on Tuesday nights at the ANU Sport "New" Hall.

Many thanks to Alister for taking charge of organising the evening, and also Sarah, Dale, and all the rest of the club members who helped make everything run smoothly.

Do you remember that great weather we had late last week? All the storms, etc.? Well, it rained so hard that the roof at ANU Sport leaked while they were resurfacing the hall. So now they have to do it again.

The original resurfacing work was due to be completed today, but this date has been pushed back because of the damage. We won't be back in until February 4 (Thursday).